Hunger
by Veriform
Summary: Darth Nihilus reflects on his fall to the Dark Side and his relationship with Visas as she boards his ship in company with the Exile. Visas/Nihilus. Comments appreciated.


I am confused. I have been confused before. My mind is slow and walks paths others dare not tread, a behemoth sliding through the dark with eerie, ponderous grace. I watch, puzzled, as they walk together onto the bridge of the ship I ripped from the heart of Malachor. Visas, my broken bird, and the Jedi, the Other Wound. A third is with them, a man whose mind slips like an eel between perception and deception. He is nothing. I point with a numb and floating finger, my robes billowing around me in a wind that no other has ever felt. My bridge officers raise their blasters. Their faces are pale. Their hands tremble. These things I understand with iron certainty. Death and destruction. Terror and obedience. Power and pain.

Betrayal.

I do not speak in words. My body bled away in years long past, becoming One with the Force in a way no other's ever has. My throat is less than the memory of a throat. I do not eat, and my hunger grows with every passing day until it is all I feel and all I have ever felt. Except for once, when my feet walked the ashes of Katarr, and I saw a child. I do not speak in words, but my men understand the force of my will as I crush their minds with purpose and intent. None betray me and survive. It is my nature. It is my onus. I am Nihilus, the Lord of Hunger.

_ Slaughter them._

Blaster bolts whine through the air. Lightsabers snap to life and the bolts fly wild or are deflected into their firers. A man dies, sagging back against an instrument panel, and I rip him from his shell and eat him. It means nothing. I hunger still. Always. Always, I hunger, and now I grow frustrated. I reach out, not with my hands but with the cursed Force. Red-gold tentacles of light blossom from my formless self and stab through my officers, my broken and unwilling slaves. I devour them and they collapse, and the bridge is silent. I point at Visas, furious and uncertain.

Why has she done this?  
"Your reign is over," says the Jedi as he saunters toward me, and I see in him the hunger that will one day turn him into a thing of screaming, clawing desire. He twirls his lightsaber, arrogant to the last. "Surrender now, Nihilus."

I do not answer. I watch Visas, watch her approach me in the shadow of the Exile. She is silent and subdued, but I can feel her as I feel no other living thing. I feel her love for the Jedi, her weakness and her desperate conviction. If she destroys me here, she thinks, her sins in my service are undone. I seize her mind and drive her to her knees before the others can react. Behind me, space is torn apart as my fleet duels the Republic's. Onasi is out there, Revan's pallid, slimy lover. I scream and my wordless voice floods the bridge as Visas howls and clutches at her skull.

_My feet walk the ashes of Katarr and I have lifted you from sin and degradation to the seat beside my throne, beneath my maw, and I have loved you as a I love no other._

_**WHY DO YOU BETRAY ME?**_

__The hurt burns in the memory of my chest, though I have no beating heart. I rip my lightsaber from the sleeve of my flowing robes. It blazes red, throwing light across my mask, and then the Exile and his treacherous comrade, the eel, are upon me. I roar and hack at them. I want to kill. There is no form, no finesse, only the Dark Side as it courses through the void where once I laughed and bathed and knew happiness. Now there is no sin, no virtue. Only the ache of my hunger and the pain of existence. The Exile blocks my lunge and his heels slide backward over the deck. I am strong, strong enough to kill whole worlds with the shadow of my will. The man, the slippery one, stabs at my back and I catch him in the Force, raise him high and break him.

His bones shatter like matchsticks in the groaning silence.

"Atton!" cries the Exile.

The body hits the deck.

I push him back with a flurry of hammering blows. My lightsaber rises and falls like a piston, driven by a thousand thousand ruined lives. He twists around my blows, yellow saber flashing. I see my emptiness burning in his eyes, my hunger etched into the lines of his weathered face. I lunge, pouring through the frozen air aboard the bridge of my flagship. I wrenched it from the heart of Malachor. He stabs me and there is no pain. I spin, robes burning, and smash his weapon aside. He staggers back, furious, and I cut at him. He parries, spins and slashes at my mask. I recoil, mired in old reflexes. I have no face to damage, but my thoughts are slow and cold.

I feel Visas stirring, her thoughts regaining clarity. I reach out to push her down, to force her to the deck. I will discipline her. I will make her see the error of her ways. But she does not obey. She rises unsteadily to her feet and I am pressed back by the Exile's onslaught, forced to remember the dueling techniques my master slashed and burned and tortured into my forgotten arms. Visas is moving toward me and I cannot feel her. She is gone from me, after so many years, the connection between us frayed and broken. Sound roars from me, rattling my mask and shaking the bridge. I know pain as I have never known it, as I have forgotten it can be felt.

_No. No. Come back. __**I HAVE NOTHING.**_

I turn to face her, sound still pouring from me in an anguished wail. And I see her as she taught me to see, a luminous presence racing toward me with a blazing red saber in her hands. It is raised to strike. She glows. I am a moth, drawn to the flame. I hold out a hand, my thoughts washing through me. And I am hungry, hungrier than I have ever been. I do not feel the Exile's lightsaber as it emerges from my stomach. My robes catch fire, and I can sense the heat. My own lightsaber drops to the deck and rolls away. Visas closes the distance between us and plunges her weapon through my mask. It is nothing, a light in a dark place. I touch her face, my glove sliding over her smooth skin.

The Exile pulls his lightsaber free of me. I hear his footsteps on the deck, circling toward the broken man. Atton. I am frightened for the first time in years. Perhaps for the first time at all.

_I gave you all I had._

She is crying. I can see the tears, lines of light running from her empty sockets. My free hand moves to her waist, to the memory of a living body. _You choose him._

"Yes," she whispers.

I reach out and seize her as I have seized so many, and for an instant I am invincible and eternal and my hunger rages. I can take her in a hundred different ways. She is trembling, pressed against me. The Exile moves past her, not seeing. I do not wish him to see. His robes sweep the deck as he kneels beside the broken shell of his friend, the eel called Atton. Visas deactivates her lightsaber and lowers it. Her fingers touch my arm. I lean toward her and breathe her in, as I have breathed nothing since my body fell away into the horror of the Dark Side. The Exile is speaking to Atton, his voice low and broken. I take Visas. I rip her from her body, drink her presence in the Force as I drank Katarr. She screams and the Exile is on his feet, spinning with saber ablaze. But he is too slow, and I am still Darth Nihilus, Lord of Hunger, Lord of Nothing. I do not look at him. I hold her fast against me, my only apprentice, my only memory of love.

"Love."

I hear the word. Perhaps I even speak it. I have said nothing in so long, I do not recognize my voice. For a moment, I hold her and part of me screams _CRUSH, DEVOUR, _and I fight it as she presses her face against my burning chest. I have consumed so much. I have killed so many, their deaths inconsequential and forgotten. I have ripped the Force from the greatest Jedi and left them soulless and twitching on the cold, dead ground. But this. This, I feel. And so I draw a breath of Visas into me, the fierce loyalty and blazing intellect. The tranquility at the center of her, the calm acceptance of the terrors she has lived through. I take a breath of her, and leave the rest.

The hunger leaves me, or perhaps I take my leave of it.

When the Exile's lightsaber slashes through my robes, it cuts only empty air.


End file.
